India, June 1 -- PUNE The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) launched its first High Performance Computing (HPC) facility at the ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune on Saturday. The advanced system, named NAKSHATRA, was inaugurated by Dr Rajiv Bahl, secretary of the department of health research and director general of ICMR.

The facility has been developed under the Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM) as part of a new project called "High Performance Computing Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Hub". It is designed to boost the country's ability to process large volumes of genomic and bioinformatics data-an area that faced challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic due to limited computing...